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A Game of Toilet Skeleton
My friend Slasher wrote a journaling game. I am gonna play it. You can
find her work here, this
particular game should be up soon.
Before I begin in earnest, the content warning from the game seems
appropriate to provide here:
“Some prompts and situations in this game contain references to self
-harm, violence, starvation, deprivation, isolation, gallows humor, and
chronic illness. This is a game in which the viewpoint character is long
dead.”
I am going to play a medium game. I roll 2d3+1 and get 5 in total.
The room my skeleton is found in is a dining room. It is in a government
office building. It died due to “internal factors (despair,
self-inflicted wound, overconfidence).” The loot it has near it is
“Buffing supplies (drugs, skill-increasing clothing, cybernetics),” of
common rarity (11 on a d20 table). It is guarded by robots.
I decide to imagine the physicality of the skeleton by dropping a
cluster of 7D6 and interpreting it as roughly person shaped. My skeleton
is seated with its legs extending sideways, arms out supporting
it.
It is time to begin writing, starting with the final entry before death.
Looking at the ingredients present, I decide that this skeleton was
someone who was working with the robots now loose in here. The “buffing
supplies” including cybernetics makes me think this was perhaps someone
testing a brain implant that would allow direct interfacing with the
security bots.
The Final Entry:
Security camera footage. It moves, and an arm wielding a laser gun
extends — it is the POV of a security bot. A man’s voice (the skeleton):
“No intruders on this floor — wait. Life signs above. How did someone
get up there?” The bot rushes up a flight of stairs. “It was supposed to
be secure! Control room compromised. I repeat, control room
compromised.” The footage shows a man standing in the dining room,
entranced, in front of a pile of computers assembled into an improvised
control station. Wires trail into the room from many directions. The
robot fires on the man, just as realization sets in — the man looks up
at the robot he controls, opening his mouth to shout something as he
sees himself blasted across the room from two perspectives.
Second-to-last-entry:
Video footage: the same man is being interviewed by a medical
professional. He has a slightly vacant expression. “Yes, sometimes it
becomes hard to return to an organic perspective, but I’m confidant that
the risks are manageable. I was working on a way to more cleanly signify
to the brain, but we had to deploy it early. You know, what with…” he
jerks his head towards something out-of camera. The interviewer makes a
noise of sympathy. “And yes I think I should take a break from it, but
my requests have not been approved. And when are they gonna sign of on
that now?”
Third-to-last:
Security footage, two feeds. A closed door with a window, the man inside
hooked up to a machine while two guards stand outside. A small robot is
in another room. After several seconds it moves around awkwardly and the
man in the room cheers. The guards murmur to each other — “that thing is
coming for our jobs, right?” “Shut up they have audio.”
Fourth-to-last:
A diary entry. The man-to-be-skeletonized agonizes over the difficulty
of his task of seamless robot-human interfacing. He is so sure it could
work but he needs a break! His head feels fried from time spent working
late. Five different time off requests rejected — the fear of impending
war has the defense contractors not letting up.
Fifth-to-last:
A technical proposal for seamless human-robot interfacing. The pitch is
for a robot that can act autonomously but be immediately logged into by
an operator to be seen through and commanded. A comic-styled
illustration shows a single brave troop with a platoon of robo-soldiers,
all saluting the US flag.
